


Break Lines

by psikeval



Category: Justified
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:39:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been like that since they were teenagers, balanced somehow even when they’re snarling like dogs on a chain. Never have known what to do without each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Calacious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/gifts).



Raylan’s looking a lot better, the day he gets out out of the hospital. Not as good as he ought to, maybe, but he’s got a way of convincing people not to look too close, when he doesn’t want them seeing. Sort of thing he must’ve learned growing up in Arlo’s house. Standing all easy and smiling bright so how bad he’s hurt won’t show. Ava knows a little something about that.

Anyway, his doctor says he’s “in great shape, all things considered,” talking mostly to Ava while the couple of feet between Boyd and Raylan fills up the whole room. They don’t even look straight at each other, like it’d kill them to say _I was worried_ or _I’m sorry_.

It’s the first time Boyd’s been back in here since the night Raylan got shot, when he showed up ready to kill somebody and nearly got arrested for running his mouth at Art Mullen. Ava came for visiting hours a couple times, and one nurse told her that “wide-eyed fella with his hair sticking up” stayed just long enough to hear the word _stabilized_ before he left again.

God only knows where Boyd’s been the past couple weeks, though Ava knows what he must’ve been doing and knows she doesn’t want to know more.

Ava thanks the doctor and the nurse at the desk, turns and says, “Ready to go?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Raylan says with another lopsided grin.

Those awful lights in the hall make him look too pale, bring out the dark circles under his eyes no matter how much he wants to pretend. He slings an arm around Boyd’s shoulders when they’re walking out, like it’s something they do all the time, and the tension goes right out of Boyd. He helps Raylan walk out to the car and doesn’t say a word.

Raylan says “I’m fine” when Boyd eases him into the backseat, but he sure doesn’t waste any time falling asleep on the way to Ava’s place. They’re barely out of the parking lot before his eyes close and his breathing evens out. Good thing, too. If he was awake he’d just be raising hell about not going back up to Lexington so he can live off ice cream and liquor and pain pills.

“Probably rather be in that motel room,” she mutters, just to have said it. Even if Boyd asked she wouldn’t turn the car around. And of course, he doesn’t ask, twisted around in the passenger seat to look back at Raylan, though when Ava glances sideways she catches Boyd’s quick half-smile.

“Oh, now, I’m sure there’s lots of things Raylan might like that I have no earthly intention to give him. Being left alone with his bullet wound and bourbon is only one.”

Ava laughs a little at that, quiet but glad, and takes the exit off the highway towards Harlan. They might not always see eye to eye, she and Boyd, but when it comes to Raylan they know right where they stand.

Raylan blinks half-awake when they pull up to the house, mumbles through being walked inside and passes out on the couch, which isn’t much of a surprise. All the drugs slowing him down, and his body trying to grab all the sleep it can get. Boyd still stands around like he’s worried.

No _like_ about it, Ava knows. But she’s used to him worrying with a gun in his hand, wild-eyed at anyone who tries to hurt what’s his. Maybe he got all that out of his system while he wasn’t at the hospital. Maybe this is what comes after and she’s just never seen it.

“You want something to drink?” she asks, and waits for him to come back from wherever he is when he looks at Raylan like that. Takes him a little longer today.

“Water, thank you.”

Ava gets it for him and isn’t a bit surprised when he sets the glass down next to Raylan instead.

 

\---

 

The afternoon and evening pass too quietly, too slow.

No use talking to Boyd. He looks lost, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself or how to even hold his own body, and Ava thinks she gets that. Those two are always circling ’round each other, since they were teenagers, balanced somehow even when they’re snarling like dogs on a chain. Never have known what to do without each other.

For a while Boyd sits like he’s praying, head bowed and hands all folded, and maybe he’s talking to God once in a while, but mostly it just sounds like he’s talking to Raylan.

When they’ve been back a couple hours and she’s halfway through the book she started yesterday, Ava offers to cook something, though she’s not even sure what’s left in the fridge. Boyd takes her keys and gets takeout from the diner instead. She wouldn’t have asked him to go after everything, because it seems cruel, but Boyd does it anyway. Sometimes she thinks he walks away from Raylan just to prove he can.

A little after five, Raylan’s cell phone rings with _Rachel_ on the screen, Lexington area code, and Ava takes it off the charger and answers before it can wake him up, walks quickly toward the kitchen and stands by the sink.

“Hello?”

“Hi. This is Deputy Marshal Brooks.”

“Right, I remember. This is Ava,” she says, and then, not sure how formal they’re being or how much Rachel remembers of when they’ve met, “Ava Crowder.”

“Oh.” There’s a brief silence on the other end. “Ms. Crowder, I don’t mean to intrude. I know Raylan’s taken some time off. Tim and I were just wondering how he’s doing.”

“Good, I think.” Ava glances into the living room and Boyd looks up, eyebrows raised, but she just shakes her head. “Been sleeping all afternoon. Doctor said he mostly needs to get some rest. And I reckon he’ll eat better, now he’s out of the hospital.”

“I’m glad. Will you tell him I said hello?”

“Sure. I can get him to call you back if you want.”

“No need.” They say their thank yous and goodbyes and have a nice evenings, and by the time Ava ends the call she notices Raylan’s foot moving just a little in the other room. She sticks his phone in her cardigan pocket and moves up closer to the doorway.

Boyd’s leaning over him again, tense and careful as hell. “Raylan?”

“Mm.”

“How you feeling?”

“Don’t like getting shot.” Raylan rubs at his face and squints around at the room for a couple seconds, makes an unhappy little sound. “We at Ava’s?”

“If I say no, is there any chance it’ll keep you from complaining?”

On the second try, Raylan’s fingers catch Boyd’s and hold on (or get held; Boyd’s thumb tracing the scar she remembers on the heel of Raylan’s hand). “Stop worrying. I’m fine.”

“Then you’ll have to acquaint me with your definition of the word, because I’m fairly certain we see it a bit differently.”

Boyd doesn’t raise his voice, but he’s stringing too many words together, that brittle way he does sometimes when he’s real upset — he and Raylan look at each other, tired and annoyed and more in love than they know how to hide, and the air in the house already feels clearer, all the way in the other room.

Sometimes she wonders how they went all those years without seeing each other, if they ever practiced out conversations in their heads like she used to do, rehearsing fights with Bowman. Never as good when you can’t see their face, but sometimes it’s all you’ve got.

 

\---

 

The next morning Ava comes downstairs and sees Raylan still asleep on the couch (in different clothes, after Boyd changed the dressing on his bullet wound last night) but no sign anywhere of Boyd. For a minute she thinks he’s left again, but then she looks out and sees him out there on the porch steps, hunched over his knees and looking smaller than she ever remembers him.

Ava fills up her favorite chipped green coffee mug, takes it outside and sits in one of the wicker chairs, and Boyd glances back over his shoulder but doesn’t say anything.

It’s grey outside, heavy clouds dark around the bottom like they might leak rain. And will, most likely, but last she checked the weather’s not calling for a storm 'til late tonight. The fields could use watering, and Ava won’t mind; the thunder never seems to rattle windows quite so bad when there’s other people in the house.

“You ever get any sleep last night?” she asks Boyd when her mug’s half-empty. His shoulders shift just a little, shrugging.

“A little.”

No use saying he should. Men don’t change, and Crowders even less so. Instead she drinks some more coffee and thinks about lighting a cigarette. Maybe just one.

Then the screen door creaks open and Boyd’s on his feet so fast it’s like he never sat down, eyes darting around to every part of Raylan, like he’s something made of glass instead of just a tired man walking around without his hat and boots and gun.

“So. What’s a man gotta do to get a drink around here,” he says, weak and raspy but still grinning like he’s won something. Predictable as hell.

And Boyd — looks at him, doesn’t hide anything. Just seeing it makes Ava’s heart ache.

“Hey, don’t,” Raylan half-whispers, but still reaches out and cradles the back of Boyd’s head in his hand, fingertips dragging through spikes of hair, flattening them. He closes the space between them until he can drop his head down, tuck his forehead against the side of Boyd’s neck. Maybe he says something else, after that, but Ava doesn’t hear it.

“Raylan.” Boyd’s voice is too even and flat, all precise, the kind of thing that never comes natural. “Good to see you up and about.”

“Mm,” Raylan sighs into his shoulder. “Is it legal for me to be this high?”

That gets a flickering grin from Boyd, aimed up at the porch roof.

“Well, no, Raylan, in fact, I slipped some methamphetamines in with your Vicodin to help you wake up. Didn’t figure you’d mind, in your current state.”

“Current state, huh.” When Raylan lifts up his head they mirror each other, like always, matching raised eyebrows and stubborn half-smiles.

“You’ll have to forgive me for saying it, but you’re something of an invalid, my friend.”

“I’m walking, aren’t I?”

“Oh, now, I do hope I haven’t hurt your feelings.”

“You’re an ass,” he announces, and kisses Boyd hard enough that he rocks back on his heels but doesn’t lose his balance, grabs onto Raylan’s collar and holds him there for a while. Ava lights her one cigarette and watches the cows across the road.

“Um. Ava,” Raylan says after a bit. It’s hard not to laugh at a man his age looking so goddamn bashful, but somehow she manages.

“Hi, Raylan.”

“Is she mad at me?” he asks Boyd, sort of quietly, like maybe he thinks he’s whispering and Ava can’t hear. Hard to tell whether that’s Vicodin or just Raylan being an idiot.

“Well, I think you might’ve acknowledged her sooner, seeing as this is her house and her hospitality we’re intruding on.” Obviously Boyd is enjoying himself now, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet with that old nervous energy.

“But,” Raylan’s brow scrunches up and he looks all wretched. “I was just…”

He doesn’t say any more, but he doesn’t really have to. She’s always been quick to take pity on him.

“I know what you were just. And I’m not mad at anybody.”

“Hm,” Raylan says, triumphantly somehow, before he wraps himself around Boyd again.

 

\---

 

Raylan doesn’t stick around for too long once he’s back up on his feet. He shaves the next day, at least as much as he ever does, and Ava trims up his hair with her good scissors 'til he doesn’t look like he’s aiming for a mullet. Then she’s got a bunch of shifts, her own plus covering for Jean who’s out sick, so she’s not home to see much of the rest. (At least Boyd’s kind enough to tell her about Raylan watching soaps for hours and blaming it completely on his meds.)

After midnight once, going to get a glass of water, she walks in on the two of them in the kitchen, Boyd’s hands on Raylan’s jaw while they kiss and Raylan just — gripping the counter behind him, tall and straight-backed but still looking like Boyd’s what’s holding him up.

They leave Tuesday afternoon, in that beat-up truck Boyd keeps around, and it doesn’t feel much like goodbye. Never does, with the two of them.

 

\---

**Author's Note:**

> To my recipient, Calacious: Thank you for the chance to write in this fandom, and I hope you enjoyed the result! Happy Holidays ♥


End file.
